by Lee Harris
He gave me his flight number, and we agreed to meet at the baggage carousel at noon on Thursday. He began to describe himself, but I told him I would make a sign with his name on it, as if I were a taxi driver picking up an incoming passenger. He laughed and said that was a good idea. When I got off the phone, I went looking for Jack’s shirt cardboards.
That left me with a free day tomorrow after having spoken to everyone in the group and most of the wives. I called Alice Wien and asked if I might come into New York in the morning and spend as much of the day as I needed to look through the original handwritten manuscript and the typewritten copy that she made from the original.
She said that would be fine, and she would be ready for me at nine-thirty or nine forty-five although I didn’t think I’d make it till ten. I decided I would ask her to send out for lunch for both of us, my treat, so I could get as much work done as possible before leaving for home. I checked with Elsie, and she said she’d take Eddie both Wednesday and enough of Thursday so that I could meet George Fried at the airport and have an hour’s conversation with him.
Then I sat for a while and thought about my next call. Ellen Koch was the only person who had indicated there might be an affair between Arthur Wien and one of the wives. I was sure she and Robin Horowitz knew each other well. Their husbands were best friends and the couples would surely spend much time together. If Robin Horowitz had confided in Ellen Koch, would Ellen tell me? I didn’t think so, but if she saw that I had figured it out, maybe she would add something that might be useful.
“Chris,” she said when I identified myself, “are you getting any closer?”
“I’ve learned a lot but I don’t know if I’m closer. I wanted to ask you about that tantalizing nugget you tossed out on Saturday.”
“What was that?”
“That one of the wives of the Morris Avenue Boys had had an affair with Arthur Wien.”
“Oh yes, that.”
“I have reason to believe that Robin Horowitz is the person you were referring to.”
“Robin?” She spoke the name as a simple question, with no surprise or shock, no anger, no derisive humor.
“Yes.”
“What can I say? I told you I didn’t know who it was.”
“Would you be likely to know if it was Mrs. Horowitz?”
“Only if she told me, and she hasn’t.”
“Do you think it’s a possibility?”
“I don’t know what to say. Anything is possible but I don’t think that’s probable. Robin and Mort are a happy couple, they have a nice family, they live enjoyable and satisfying lives. I can’t think why Robin would have an affair with anyone.”
“Can you think of any reason why she would visit him by herself and keep the visits a secret?”
“None.”
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention to her or to anyone else that I asked you these questions.”
“They didn’t lead anywhere,” she said. “I have no reason to mention them.”
“Chris,” Melanie Gross called as I pushed the stroller by her driveway. “You going anywhere?”
“Just going,” I called back. I leaned over to Eddie and said, “Look, there’s your friend Mel.”
He returned her smile and wave and said something which I recognized as his version of Mel but which I could not reproduce myself.
“Let’s walk.” She came to the curb. “We never do our morning thing any more and my muscles miss it.”
“So do I. Where are your kids?”
“Doing after-school things. I’m a free woman for the next hour and I really feel the need of a walk. And I want to hear about the case.”
I started by telling her that the dead man was alive.
“Chris, how do you find these things out? That’s incredible.”
“I just called the number, he answered, and he owned up to who he was.”
“Why haven’t the others in the group found out?”
“Because they’ve never called his number. He thought they were pretty boring, and I gather they thought the same of him. Why would they call his widow, who was his second wife and no one knew her very well if at all? What would there be to talk about?”
“I see. So he lives out in the open and no one sees him.”
“That’s the way it looks to me.” I brought her up to date and then said, “Tomorrow I’m going through the pencil manuscript of The Lost Boulevard.”
“Pencil, gee. Do they still make pencils?” Mel laughed.
“I guess they did in the fifties.”
“What do you expect to find?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a line that didn’t get printed that says something telling about someone.”
“Chris, that’ll take you days, weeks.”
“Well, I’ll start by glancing at every page. Something may leap out at me. There should be things he crossed out, things that never got in the final manuscript. Maybe those were sensitive things that it would be in bad taste to publish.”
“You really have quite a job cut out for you.” We turned a corner and kept moving. “I hope it all comes together.”
“They all know things they’re withholding, Mel. I talked to a woman this morning who visited Arthur Wien at his apartment several times a couple of years ago, and she denies they had an affair but won’t say what the visits were about. She said she gave her word to keep it secret.”
“So there really have been things going on.”
“Oh yes. And Wien borrowed money that he didn’t return. One lender insisted on having the manuscript as collateral.”
“So they knew his reputation.”
“But they all say nice things about him anyway,” I said. “They stick up for each other.”
“Sounds like one guy didn’t.”
“But which one? Come, let’s give Eddie a run for his money.”
16
Jack is, of course, the best baby-sitter I have, except for the first time I left him with Eddie, when Eddie was very young and Jack very inexperienced, even more inexperienced than I. Now I rely on him completely. Although he doesn’t get to see Eddie in the evenings as we are a morning family, rising early, he sees him every day from getting out of bed till leaving for work, a couple of good hours. That will change in the next few days when Jack’s schedule changes with his new assignment, but I know their relationship will not suffer.
Anyway, I dashed out of the house for my evening meeting with Bernie and Marilyn Reskin as soon as we had finished dinner. These were the last people on my list, and I had been told that they were gossipers so there was still hope I could get something new and useful out of them.
Marilyn Reskin opened the door and greeted me with great enthusiasm. She was a small woman wearing a colorful cotton skirt, a short-sleeved shirt, and sandals, comfortable clothes that were far from showy. Her husband appeared as we were walking toward the back of the house, and he greeted me just as warmly. He then introduced me to a tall young man who was apparently a student and who was now leaving.
“I hope we’ve got him straightened out,” he said when he joined us on the enclosed porch where we had seated ourselves. “That boy is right on the line. If he tips the right way, the world is his.”
“This is Bernie’s life,” his wife said and I could feel pride emanate from her.
“I hope you’re successful,” I said. “It must be very hard for you when the scales tip the other way.”
“Harder than you can imagine. I’ve visited boys at Riker’s Island. I don’t recommend that to anyone.”
Having made one visit to Riker’s myself to see an inmate, I could only agree with him. “I’m afraid I’m here to talk about something that’s also quite painful.”
“Artie’s death, I know. Morty said you were working on it, and I know he’s worried because the police think he could have done it.”
“Why would they think that?” I asked as unassumingly as I could.
“He found Artie. They fig
ure he killed him, then walked out and told us he’d found a body. Morty couldn’t kill anything. He’s a healer in the truest sense of the word.”
“Someone killed him,” I said.
“Sure, someone killed him. Maybe someone in the restaurant walked into the men’s room while Artie was there, and they got in a fight.”
“And the other person just happened to have an ice pick in his pocket?”
His wife leaned forward. “Bernie and I have been through this a hundred times. These men are friends, many of them since kindergarten. Why would one of them kill Artie?”
“You tell me.”
“How far back do you want to go?” Bernie asked.
“That’s an interesting question.”
“Well, everybody knows that Artie took Freddy Beller’s sweetheart away from him. That was over forty years ago, and Fred is married to a wonderful woman and lives in Minnesota. You think that’s too far back?”
“I don’t think it’s too far back. I think it’s not a motive.”
“OK, that sounds reasonable.”
“Do you think Fred Beller could have resented the use of his mother’s suicide in The Lost Boulevard?”
“I can’t see that,” Bernie said. “First of all, Artie made it a father, not a mother. And he was very sensitive in how he portrayed it. I thought he did a great job with that book.”
“And Fred Beller hasn’t been in New York in years,” his wife added.
“Even so,” I said. It had occurred to me that since Fred had married happily, he might be considered off the hook for the murder if it ever came to light that he had been in New York that weekend. But he might have had another motive, one the police might not be aware of. “For the sake of argument, let’s consider Fred Beller among the group of suspects.”
“Which includes me,” Bernie said.
“And everyone else at the dinner.”
“OK, so Fred’s a suspect even if he was a thousand miles away.”
“Did you know that he and Arthur Wien were supposed to get together in Minneapolis once and something happened and it didn’t work out?”
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Bernie said. “Artie was a friendly guy and he did a lot of traveling, you know, promoting his books. If a get-together didn’t jell, well, some of them don’t. Who told you about this? Cindy?”
“I found out another way. Let me ask you about the most mysterious member of the Morris Avenue Boys, George Fried.”
“George? George is dead.”
“I know that.” But I knew, too, that being dead meant no one would ever mention his name as a suspect. Being dead seemed to me like the best cover a killer could have. “I just want to know more about him.”
“He’s a little guy who turned out to be a big guy,” Bernie said. I knew he was referring to the old photo in which George was in the front row and Bernie in the back. “I’m a big guy who turned into a little guy.”
“Did you like him?”
“We liked everybody. We were a great bunch of kids. We all had a mission. We wanted to grow up and be somebody, do something. And thank God, we all did.”
“Who did the best?” I asked, knowing it was an unfair question.
“Bernie and Ernie,” Marilyn said quickly. “Bernie helps kids become good people, and Ernie helps people live when their bodies want them to die.”
“I would pick Artie and Joe,” Bernie said, “a writer and a musician. Think of how many lives they affect. Artie’s books sold in the millions, I heard, and when Joe played before an audience, thousands of people heard him. When you add radio and television, my God, it’s millions.”
“What did George Fried do?”
“He was in business, made toys, I think. His son probably runs the company now.”
“Bruce Kaplan is also a businessman,” I said.
“Bruce Kaplan is a very sad story,” Bernie said, “a very, very sad story. He went to jail for doing something that’s not so different from what the kids I work with try to do. It’s called stealing.”
If he had been trying to shock me, he succeeded. All the other members of the group had ridiculed the possibility that Bruce had done what he had served time for. This man’s view was the exact opposite: Bruce was guilty as charged. “I was led to believe he had taken the rap, so to speak, for someone else.”
“You can believe that,” Bernie said. “I think a lot of people believe that. The story is that his father-in-law stole the money and Bruce accepted responsibility. I don’t think that’s true. His father-in-law wasn’t even going into the office in those days. Bruce did it. Why don’t you ask him?”
“Because it must be very embarrassing to talk about. And if he’s covering for someone, I don’t expect he’d tell me that that person did it. So what I’d hear is that he did it. If he even agreed to talk about it.”
“That doesn’t make him a killer, you know,” Bernie said.
“I know. I’m still looking for a motive. Did Arthur Wien ever borrow money from you?”
Marilyn laughed. “I have to hold Bernie back from giving money to stray dogs and cats. I don’t let him out of the house with more than he needs to get home. How could he lend money to anyone?”
“I was told Mr. Wien borrowed from his friends.”
“Could be,” Bernie said. “But it wasn’t from me.”
“Or me,” his wife added.
“I heard something else,” I said, deciding at that moment to talk about it. “I heard one person who lent him money kept the manuscript of The Lost Boulevard as collateral.”
Bernie smiled and looked at his wife.
“Sounds like a shrewd lender,” she said.
“Must have been some sum of money,” he said.
“Was it either of you?”
They both spoke at once, denying it.
“Who might have done something like that?” I asked.
“Got me,” Bernie said. “But I love it.”
“What I was thinking was that perhaps Bruce Kaplan took money from his business to lend to Arthur Wien.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Bernie said. “Bruce isn’t a soft touch, not for a lot of money. There’d have to be one hell of a reason that Artie needed a lot of money for Bruce to do something like that. And I don’t believe it happened.”
It was, of course, possible that Alice Wien had made the whole story up. “Why did you pick Father’s Day as the time for the reunion?”
“Because there wasn’t another weekend on the calendar,” Marilyn said. “You would not believe the phone calls that went back and forth till we got that date. Nobody wanted Father’s Day. But someone had a wedding the weekend before, someone else had a wedding the weekend after, there was a graduation, a convention. You wouldn’t believe what we had to contend with.”
“Who arranged the dinner?” I asked.
“We did, Bernie and I. No one ever wants to do it so we do it.”
“Then you must stay in touch with everyone.”
“We do,” she said. “We keep it all together.”
“Then you probably know more than anyone else the state of Joe Meyer’s health.”
“Terrible,” they said, almost in unison.
“For a wonderful guy, a guy who never hurt anyone in his life, a guy who only made the world a better, happier place, it’s a terrible way to go,” Bernie said.
“Not to mention what happened to their daughter,” Marilyn said.
I looked at her.
“She cracked up her car, and her body. What it did to Joey and Judy, you can’t imagine.” She took a deep breath and looked down at her lap. A tear dropped on her hand. It was as if she were talking about her own child.
“How did it happen?” I asked
She swiped her fingers across her cheeks. “She was in her car, somewhere here in the New York area. I don’t really know the details because they never said and I couldn’t ask, but there were a lot of broken bones and I don’t know if she’ll ever play again. You have n
o idea how talented she was.”
“They showed me a picture of her bowing onstage, holding a bouquet of roses.”
“At least they have the memories.”
“They never said there’d been an accident,” I said.
“How can you talk about that kind of thing? It breaks your heart. I don’t know how Joe survived it.”
“They’re tough people,” Bernie said. “We’re all tough people. No one’s life is easy. What about yours, Chris? Do you have an easy life?”
“I do now,” I admitted. “I’m very lucky. But when I was fifteen, things were very different.”
Bernie smiled. “I’m glad things are better for you. Are we telling you anything that’s going to help? I have a feeling we haven’t.”
“Actually, you’ve told me a few things I didn’t know. Now I’m going to ask you a hard one. I heard that Arthur Wien had an affair with the wife of one of the men in the group.”
They looked at each other as though each wanted the other to come up with a name. Then Bernie started to laugh. “Artie and one of the wives?”
“That’s right. The question is, which one?”
“I don’t know. That’s crazy. Was it you, Marilyn? I remember once you came home late from a meeting. Were you having a fling with Artie Wien?”
“God forbid.” She looked at me. “I never heard of such a thing. Who told you this?”
“I’d rather not say. I thought you might have heard a rumor.”
“I wish I had,” Bernie said. “Artie and one of the wives. I’d sell what’s left of my soul to find out who.”
“If it happened,” Marilyn said. “If it happened.”
Which was the way I was starting to think. “I guess you can’t help me there. Do you know if any of the wives might have been a kind of confidante of Mr. Wien? Someone he’d talk to if he had a problem?”
She pursed her lips, he shrugged.
“The only two people connected with the group that I haven’t met yet are Cindy Wien and Dr. Greene’s wife. What can you tell me about them?”
“Cindy’s very sweet,” Marilyn said. “She’s smart. She’s pretty, but that goes without saying. Artie wouldn’t spend time with someone who wasn’t. She dresses beautifully and she has the right figure to show it off.”
